Reverend Henry Honywood D'Ombrain (May 10, 1818 Pimlico, London - October 23, 1905 Westwell, Ashford, Kent), clergyman, rosarian, rose author
[From "D'Ombrain, Henry Honywood (1818-1905), Church of England clergyman and gardener", by Peter D. A. Boyd, 2009:] D'Ombrain, Henry Honywood (1818-1905), Church of England clergyman and gardener, was born in Ebury Street, Pimlico, London, on 10 May 1818, the son of Admiral Sir James D'Ombrain (1793-1871), inspector-general of the Coast Guard in Ireland from 1819 to 1849, for which he was knighted in 1844, and his wife, Mary, née Furley (d. 1864). His family was of French Huguenot descent. Brought up in Ireland from early infancy, he attended Trinity College, Dublin, where, in 1838, at the age of twenty, he helped to found the Natural History Society of Dublin of which he was secretary until 1841. He graduated BA in 1839 and was ordained in the Church of Ireland in 1841. He served as curate of Bray (about ten miles from Dublin) and Dargle between 1841 and 1847. Before leaving Dublin he presented a collection of taxidermy specimens of Irish birds to the Natural History Society. On 11 July 1840 he married Mary Matthews (1814-1850) of Dublin. After twenty-eight years in Ireland, he returned to England and became curate of Christ Church, Ramsgate, Kent, from 1847 to 1849 and perpetual curate of St George's, Deal, Kent, from 1849 to 1868. Following the death of his first wife at Deal, he married second, at Rochester, Kent, on 28 April 1852, Catharine (1826-1912), daughter of George Acworth, solicitor. They had a daughter. In 1868 he became vicar of Westwell, Ashford, Kent, where he remained until his death; he restored the church in 1884.
[From Rose Letter, February 2017, pp. 11ff.:] Henry D’Ombrain was born in London in 1818 but from infancy was reared in Ireland. At Trinity College as a student he helped establish the National History Society of Dublin in 1838, serving as its secretary until he was ordained in 1841. By 1847 he had returned to England, and with him his wife Mary whom he had wed in 1840. Employed by the Church first as a curate then as a vicar in Kent, he became a notable rose grower, his first garden on a windy cliff, his second in a partition of field, both difficult locations...In the 1860s D’Ombrain began visiting rose breeders and nurseries in France, his ancestral grounds. There he familiarized himself with the popular and the new roses produced in that nation.....His book Roses for Amateurs came out in 1887, a practical guide for the newcomer to roses. Unlike the famous Dean Hole who wrote primarily for rose exhibitors, D’Ombrain frankly declared his readership to be rose gardeners, those for whom beauty in the garden supersedes the staged beauty of a show.
